He was to be the capstone preacher for the Young Leader’s preaching series this summer. He had several excellent sermons to follow. There is always the questions, “what do you focus on?”, “how will you be received?” “what do you wear?” when you preach for a 6,000 member church. When a man prepares to bring God’s Word to a crowd it is a struggle to fight the intermingling motives of wanting to be faithful to the Word of God, and wanting to be approved of.

Thats’ why he had to be broken, just enough.

Sunday afternoon, one week before he was to preach, we finally both returned home after dropping off multiple people after service (we take two different cars because we have so many stops to make…God is working in people’s lives to want to come to Perimeter Church!)

“I feel really led to go back to the office and work some more on my sermon.”

He tells me when he gets home.

Three of the five kiddos had JUST fallen asleep, so I send him off to go listen to the Lord.

or get broken, just enough, by Him.

Thirty minutes later, moments away from me getting to lie down and rest this pregnant body, I get a phone call.

An agonizing voice on the other end,

“Honey, I’ve been in a motorcycle accident….I can’t move my arm, its dislocated. An ambulance is coming for me. Can you meet me at the hospital?”

Shock. Then disbelief. Then the adrenaline starts pumping.

As he groans in pain I pray over him and hang up the phone. Quick phone calls are made to find someone to dump five children off to while I go meet my who-knows-what-else-is-broken-or-damaged husband at the ER.

On the way there I see the sight of the accident, his motorcycle and the cop still waiting for the tow truck to come. I quickly pull over and talk to the officer.

“Ma’am your husband will be fine (i hear wailing coming from inside my car…”Daddy!!! Is Daddy going to be OK??? I want Daddy!!!”) but he sure got lucky. He’s gonna be in some serious pain but he can be glad there were no cars right behind him…they would have run right over him. He got off real easy for a motorcycle accident.”

I get some more information from the officer and then continue on my trek to drop my sobbing children off at a friend’s house.

“God is so good, guys! Daddy’s going to be OK. God protected Daddy so much, and even though his arm is hurt, there is so much more that could have happened to him!”

“But Daddy won’t be able to make cheesy eggs for us!! Daddy won’t be able to take us to the pool! Can Daddy still play basketball with me?!?”

But they calm down as we try to name all the things God protected Daddy from, instead of what DID happen.

I get to the hospital just in time for the nurse to tell me, “Ma’am you’ll have to wait in the hall. We don’t like family members to be around while we pop joints back into place. We’ll come get you when he wakes back up again.”

Danny’s mentor had beat me to the hospital (he didn’t have sleeping children to load into the car and go drop of) and he waits with me in the lobby, calming my fears and keeping me occupied so that my imaginative worry doesn’t take over.

We finally get called back in.

Danny in pain after getting his arm popped back into joint and the gravel scrubbed out of his road rash.

The nurses are busy cleaning gravel and dirt out of his road-rash-ripped-up-arms and hands. I start breathing freely again as the doctor reports that there are no major head injuries, and no broken bones.

But God had done some breaking.

Danny being broken, just enough, to get his attention.

Broken just enough, to pierce through muddled thinking in order to get the Eternal Kingdom in clear view.

Broken just enough to disengage from caring about temporal things like what people think.

Broken just enough, to need an abundance of prayers…

which led to the healing of body and healing of heart.

A heart broken just enough, and healed just enough, to hear, discern, and then deliver the most powerful sermon I have heard preached.

Would you like to watch it or hear it, too?

Be ready to be broken

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Thank you Kimberly for sharing both your experience of God in the midst of this trial and also the message that Danny gave. Blessed by both. I have shared them on my facebook feed. May God continue His mighty work in and through you, this is my confident prayer for you!

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